While drawing a heart (see attachment) with the PEN Tool, can you drag out from a node, a new control handle. Shift-U creates a new handle, however It appears one must interrupt the drawing process to manipulate it.

Dragging the pen tool briefly while creating a path will create Bezier curves, if the pen is in Bezier mode.

The example of drawing a heart introduces two nodes that are corner points/nodes. Dragging the Pen Tool will create smooth node points (thank you) this is useful up until we get to the sharp point of the heart. The sharp point at the top of the heart should have a corner point node with two control handles that are not parallel to one another. A work around so far, is to simply draw one half of the heart and press ENTER, then begin drawing again at that very corner point, dragging out a new control point.

To set the two control points of a node separately (and force the node to be a corner point), first set the control point for the end point of the previous Bezier curve, then without releasing the mouse button hold down the Shift key while setting the control point for the next Bezier curve.

http://tavmjong.free.fr/INKSCAPE/MANUAL/html/Paths-Creating.html#Paths-Bezier

To extend the Bezier handle of the last node, Shift-drag on the node with the node tool.

TD

Oh my gosh! You fixed it. This is exactly what i was looking for. So the trick is simply pressing the SHIFT key at the right time. Thanks so much! I'm really liking Inkscape. The attached .SVG file was created with your help.